“That honestly wasn’t the worst fight of my life,” Arden said, stretching.

  “Out of curiosity, what was?” Savish asked, figuring out the best way to stuff the bull into her inventory.

  “Someone named Domah,” he said.

  “I don’t know that one. Were they from your trial?”

  “You could say that.”

  A few minutes had passed since Volis and Torvis left the crater left by the bull’s explosions to go and reunite with their remaining team member after bidding them farewell and giving everyone a business card for the Indigo Flash guild. Arden inspected the card, suspicion evident on his face.

  “Is it normal to get recruitments this easily?”

  “That wasn’t an easy fight,” Vera said. “It took six red-tiers and an orange tier to kill it. The fact that all of us are still alive shows that we’re pretty solid when it comes to fighting monsters. Guilds are always on the lookout for new members, and the Indigo Flash guild found some prospective new members just now.”

  “But is it normal to get recruitments like this?” he asked again, flashing her the card. “I’ve met two guilds, and both of them wanted to recruit me. Actually, Chorzo rescinded his offer because he felt that we would be limited at Miasma.”

  “Think about what you’ve done for the guilds already,” Vera said. “With Miasma, we stopped two rogues from staging a kidnapping, aided in the rescue of a large number of Blight Walkers that were being harvested for their essence, and then cured them of their affliction.”

  “You guys need to catch up,” Sya said, reading her Status. “I’m already at 92/1000 until Main-Sequence, most of which came from curing the Blight Walkers.”

  “And now,” Vera continued. “We helped what were likely the children of the Indigo Flash guild’s leadership. Only people with a high standing would be able to hash out deals and invite others to the guild like that.”

  “I think my restaurant’s guest number is about to hit an all-time high thanks to that guild,” Savish said, trying to peel the exterior skull from the bull’s head. “Vera, can you help me for a second? I need your sharpness.”

  “What are you trying to do?” she asked, moving over to Savish.

  “I’m trying to remove the skull. Chances are it’ll go for a pretty penny at a broker. Same with the horns. They can probably be forged into something.”

  Vera turned back to her boyfriend who was reading Sya’s Status with a deflated expression. Vera believed that he was currently looking at her progress to being main-sequence with envy.

  “Hey Arden, how do you feel about wearing a bull skull helmet?”

  He thought about it for a second before answering.

  “It’s alright.”

  She smiled.

  “Is it too edgy for you?” she teased.

  “No. I just don’t think that bull horns look good. Now a deer skull on the other hand…” he gave a sinister chuckle. “Anyone could rock that, especially with antlers. Not the extremely long ones that the streamer stag has though.”

  “Valid,” Sya said with a nod. “Deer skulls are sexy.”

  Savish handed Vera a surgical knife and traced the base of the blast bull’s skull where it covered the rest of the head. She pointed out the tiny gap to Vera.

  “Try to sever the connections. I could try to force it, but I’d probably damage the skull with my power.” She turned to Arden and Sya who were currently engaged in a discussion about which animal skulls were the most aesthetically pleasing. “You guys might want to see this. To get the most bang for your buck, you should know how to butcher some of your prey.”

  They watched in silence as Vera expertly managed to cut the sinew connecting the bone to the tissue beneath it. After a few seconds, she was able to gently lift it from the carcass. Savish paid no mind as Vera put the skull and horns in her inventory while Savish took the rest of the bull.

  “To recap,” Arden said. “Vera got a skull, Savish gave me an Enhancement Boon Satellite, and Savish got a meat supplier.”

  “A possible meat supplier,” Savish added.

  “Sya, did you get anything?” he asked.

  “I got a Satellite from the bull.”

  Everyone stopped and looked at her. Wordlessly, she held her hand out in front of her and a small, dying flame appeared in her hand, and the Status appeared with its vague, non-soul cluster description.

  Smoldering Ember

  Satellite Tier: Red

  Satellite Rank: Supergiant.

  Satellite Type: Tool (Ember).

  Satellite Description: Hidden.

  Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

  Satellite Aspects: Hidden.

  “Oh you’re being serious,” Arden said.

  “Damnit,” Vera muttered. “So now I’m the only one to not have a real Satellite?”

  “For now,” Sya smiled. “We should be getting our forged ones in a few days, though.”

  “It’s not the same if you don’t loot it…” she pouted.

  “I haven't gone into my soul cluster to check out what it does,” Sya explained. “I can wait until we get back to Miasma before I do that. Only an idiot would go to their soul cluster in hostile territory."

  Arden looked away.

  “But that begs the question,” Sya continued after throwing shade at her brother. “Do we head back now, or keep hunting? We’ve already spent a few hours out here.”

  Arden and Sya both turned to Vera.

  “You’re the leader,” Arden said. “Personally, I’d like to restock on some biomass before we leave, but if you think we’ve done enough we can go back to town.”

  “Let me ask you this: Did you two use this time properly? Did you learn more about your powers?”

  Both of them nodded their heads. Arden learned that he could extend his tentacles when targeting something devourable, and Sya learned that her poisonous blood was under her complete control. All in all, it had been a very profitable few hours.

  “Do you want to learn how to use your powers even more?” Vera followed up, receiving nods in return. “Then we’ll hunt for another few hours or so, but let's not go any further away from the warp station. If something else happens, it's better to be closer to the Starborn guarding the station.”

  They climbed up the crater and gave one last look to the battlefield that yielded everyone except Vera some rewards. Arden’s enhanced Stoneflesh Shroud, Sya’s Smoldering Ember, and Savish’s meat supply deal. Vera puffed her cheeks in envy as she led them back into the forest while Arden spoke.

  “Huh,” he said, looking over the crater. “Why did the bull not ever use an explosion the size of the crater? Didn’t it make it?”

  “I don’t think this was a crater left by an explosion,” Savish said. “If I remember correctly, this place was a pond last time I came here. The water must have either been displaced by the fight, or straight up evaporated by the bull’s blasting.”

  Arden’s eyes scanned over the crater and the forest surrounding it.

  “I don’t see any fish.”

  “They also must have been displaced by the fight, or straight up evaporated by the bull’s blasting.”

  *****

  Arden’s group of Starborn stepped out of the warp station, covering their eyes from the light of the setting sun. They spent most of the day outside, but they also spent a while in the warp station on the return trip, so it took a moment for their eyes to adjust.

  The last few hours of hunting had been appealingly simple. Nothing remotely close to the blast bull in terms of strength appeared as they finished off the hunt. They even had trouble finding things that were as strong as the first streamer stag.

  Arden smiled with satisfaction as they walked down the street. Blast bull aside, it was nice to fight things that were his level. He knew that this was what the majority of Starborn did, and that he, with his history of Mavericks, Stonelords, rogue Starborn, and the occasional deity-like bullshit entity, was an outlier.

  Vera was quick to remind them that not all protostars were made equal, and they had lucked out for the second half of their hunting day. It was strange for a lot of protostar Celestials to be so easily defeated by their Starborn counterparts. Vera chalked it up to the cascade, and their surplus having not yet been cleared of the chaff.

  A total of 14 Celestials had been killed by them since the blast bull’s defeat, all of them weaker than the streamer stag, and a few were even weaker than the lesser thagomizard. The cores were split evenly between the three red-tiers, with the remaining two going to Savish.

  Arden devoured half of the monster's, while the others seven were given to Savish, not for her restaurant, but for her to break down in her spare time. She was completely fine with doing the grunt work, but she wanted a cut of the profit that the Celestial parts would go for.

  One of the things they did discover about Sya's Blight absorption was that she only progressed her rank from reabsorbing her Blight essence if the blight essence either killed the creature, or took root long enough. She was very annoyed to find out that she couldn't just feed a little bit of essence to a Celestial near the end of a battle and reap the rewards.

  Regardless, she was able to absorb five points of Blight essence from her foes, still making her far and away the closest to advancing to main sequence at 97 out of 1000, while Arden trailed behind in second place at 11, and Vera was still at the starting line. Thus far, she had only used the one core when demonstrating to Arden how to absorb cores, which was a pointless demonstration in hindsight.

  “Do you guys feel a day stronger?” Vera asked the pair.

  “I feel several days stronger,” Arden replied. “I got more out of actually using my ability just today than I have using it any other time before. Probably because that was the point of today.”

  “I definitely feel stronger as well,” Sya said. “But it's hard to feel successful when day one had your progression go up by almost 90 points, and today went up by eight.”

  “You can't expect Blight Walkers to just fall out of the sky,” Arden said.

  “Can't I?” Sya said, stopping to look up at the sky.

  Arden, Vera, and Savish all did the same until they heard Sya snicker. They turned their eyes towards her, unamused.

  “Imagine if that actually worked,” she said, continuing along the streets.

  When they got back to Savish’s restaurant, Cayde was waiting inside. His lonely face lit up when he saw Savish return and sprinted to open the door, letting them in.

  After sharing a passionate kiss with his beloved he looked at the rest of them, his eyes remaining focused on Arden’s shirt just long enough for Arden to realize that everyone on the street that they walked by gave him the same confused, somewhat offended look. Cayde looked to be the same breed as Torvis, though, as he just found it more entertaining than offensive.

  “You definitely need to meet with that tailor,” Cayde said.

  “Oh, right!” Savish said, pulling a note from her inventory. “I forgot to give this to you the other night. It's the address of the tailor and a referral from me.”

  Arden took it and read the address on the enclosed envelope. He chuckled and spoke.

  “I'm going to lose it. Yuro is your guy?”

  “You know him?” Savish asked.

  “We know of him. We've been told three times in as many days that we'll want to give him a visit. One of the people who gave us his location was his brother-in-law.”

  “Take my recommendation as well,” Savish advised. “If Loyid told you to go there, then it's because you want armor. But if I'm sending you there, it's for something that you want more than anything.”

  Arden’s eyes lit up.

  “That's right,” Savish continued. “The dress of your dreams is waiting to be made over there. He's closed for the weekend though. You'll have to wait until Monday."

  “I've waited a few weeks already. I can wait two more days.”